GameBanshee Forums

Over on the marriage vs. partnership thread, our friends C Elegans and EMINEM are waging a spirited side-debate over whether a website is propaganda or scholarship.

This brings up some interesting questions: How reliable is information available on the Internet? More or less than a tabloid? More or less than a newspaper? More or less than a book? More or less than a scholarly journal?

Any yokel who can teach themself HTML can create a webpage, but not everyone can get a book published by the Princeton University Press or a journal article in the Journal of American History. Is online reference material necessarily factual? Is printed reference material necessarily factual? When you cite a website, how confident are you that the website represents an informed, well-rounded opinion based on facts and not just the ranting of its author?

How can ordinary people (ie-those without formalised training in scholarly methods) distinguish between sources (print, online, and other media) which may be erroneous or deliberately misleading and those sources which meet the standards of good scholarship?

Generally anything on the internet I doubt to some extent. Especially when you compare the difficulties of getting a piece of work published as opposed to the ease of designing your own web page.

Tamerlane, has basically summed it up. It is how easy it is to publish which makes up at least part of the problem. If the written work (newspaper, internet, etc.) cites peer reviewed publications (and these can be checked, and when checked are in accord with the original claim..) you only then have the problem of poor peer review (and yes this not as insignificant as it should be - especially in astrophysics!).

So on the internet you need to check the source references if you are not convinced about veracity.

That being said the source is not to be disregarded, (i.e.)The Australian Bureau of Statistics will be very careful NOT to publish incorrect information on its web site, so common sense needs to be a guide. Also on USENET the FAQ's are to some extend peer reviewed and -with commonsense- can be used as a useful information source.

The bolder or more contentious the claim the better the supporting sources required is a pretty useful guide. - Curdis !

imo you should be eqully carefull with reliablilty whatever means to aquire information you are using. "Internet" in itself is not a source more then "books" are a source. And reliability should be judged from the source not the means of distribution.

Originally posted by Dottie
And reliability should be judged from the source not the means of distribution.

I agree. How does one go about verifying the source for online reference material to see who is really authoring a webpage? If you have a book, you simply flip to the back of the cover page and it will tell you where the book was published and the publisher's name. That way, you can tell whether a reputable institution was willing to put its stamp on the book (and presumable provide editors and fact checkers) or if the author had the book printed through a vanity press and it went into publication without any sort of peer-review or editing.

Website content is harder to monitor because the owner of a domain name is not necessarily the owner of that copywrited name. For instance, you use to be able to go to Penthouse.com and get, not a girlie magazine, but a condominium real estate agent in south Florida (Penthouse magazine has since bought out the rights to the domain name). This misleads web surfers as to the actual content of a webpage.

Extreme religious fundamentalists (of all denominations) and hate groups (Neo-Nazis, etc.) have become very adept at hiding the more vitriolic parts of their messages beneath seemingly-innocuous titles and domain names, drawing in people who may be looking for something completely different.

I could post an essay about this topic, but a few points, I'll most likely post more later:

1. I think internet information reflects the same categories of information as printed information with one important expection, the one you mention in the next paragraph: Anyone can put up a website and distribute information in an inexpensive way, whereas printing it is much more expensive and thus much less avaliable. This means that the ratio of non reliable material is probably higher at internet.

2. A lot of online reference material is obviously very non-factual, but lots of printed reference material is of course also non-factual and merely reflect people's opinions or contain distorted, misrepresented data. Personally, I have fairly high demands on information, and I mainly use two methods depending on the type of information:
a. Interreliabiliy - checking many sources that are relatively independant of each other. This method I use for news, for instance. I have the habit to read US, Swedish, British and Arab news websites. I have been looking for African news websites in a language I understand, but without success.
b. The scientific system - for all scientific information, I use only the peer-reviewed, scientific press. Not popular media, not summaries. I use secondary litterature when I have to because I'm not knowledgable enough in an area, and then I use books edited at the university press, used for education - standard works. When using secondary literature, I always check so that the references are from the primary literature, ie the peer-reviewed press.

3. Access to reliable information is, as it has always been in "civilized" society, still a socioeconomic issue. But apart from those problems, there are some check points "ordinary people" can follow.

- always check sponsors, affiliations and funding
- always check references
- for scientific information, use ISI:s list of what is a peer-reviewed scientific journal and not.

Originally posted by HighLordDave
Website content is harder to monitor because the owner of a domain name is not necessarily the owner of that copywrited name. For instance, you use to be able to go to Penthouse.com and get, not a girlie magazine, but a condominium real estate agent in south Florida (Penthouse magazine has since bought out the rights to the domain name). This misleads web surfers as to the actual content of a webpage.

Use whois to (hopefully) find out who the owner is.

Ok, sorry for my stupidity. il take another example.

Registrant:
Microsoft Corporation (MICROSOFT-DOM)
1 microsoft way
redmond, WA 98052
US

Domain Name: MICROSOFT.COM

Administrative Contact:
Microsoft Hostmaster (MH37-ORG) msnhst@MICROSOFT.COM
Microsoft Corp
One Microsoft Way
Redmond, WA 98052
US
425 882 8080
Fax- - - .: 206 703 2641
Technical Contact:
MSN NOC (MN5-ORG) msnnoc@MICROSOFT.COM
Microsoft Corp
One Microsoft Way
Redmond, WA 98052
US
425 882 8080
Fax- PATH
Billing Contact:
idNames, Accounting (IA90-ORG) accounting@IDNAMES.COM
idNames from Network Solutions, Inc
440 Benmar
Suite #3325
Houston, TX 77060
US
703-742-4777
Fax- - 281-447-1160

Record last updated on 29-Jan-2002.
Record expires on 03-May-2011.
Record created on 02-May-1991.
Database last updated on 18-Mar-2002 10:24:00 EST.

Domain servers in listed order:

DNS1.CP.MSFT.NET 207.46.138.20 DNS1.TK.MSFT.NET 207.46.232.37 DNS3.UK.MSFT.NET 213.199.144.151 DNS3.JP.MSFT.NET 207.46.72.123 DNS1.DC.MSFT.NET 207.68.128.151

EDIT: Thanks Dottie, I think your new example is much better

For more details about how to find reliable scientific facts and what ISI and peer-review means, check my post on this topic here.

Although WHOIS is available to anyone browsing the internet, I'd rather not have all of my personal info posted here in the message boards =).

Now why would that be Buck? Kidding.

Having worked as a "bibliometrician" (the science of books ) I can safely say that I have as much confidence in peer-reviewed literature as I do in a web-site.

Whilst peer-review itself is the best process out of what is available, it also introduces flaws itself.

Authors are motivated by the "publish or perish" syndrome, they cite themselves ad nauseum to increase their citation count (often used as a measure of success. The scientific community can be closed and incestuous.

A book, newspaper or scientific journal can be just as opinionated and ranting as a web site. After all, who is going to admit their research has failed or the premise of their book, upon reflection, was wrong? At least a web site is open to public review and feedback.

Don't believe everything you read in the Newspapers.

I think the advantage of the Internet over newspapers and TV is that you get access to a wider variety of sources and therefore can make a better judgement on the findings of others.

I hope I don't be besides the point here, but IMO one should doubt *everything* he/she reads or hears, whether it's published in the book, a magazine or @ Internet, or lectured by a professor.

One should learn to think everything critically and think for her/himself. But that doesn't stubbornes; denying new ideas and theories without arguments isn't constructive (this should be obvious but many times forgotten).

Back to the subject: in Internet it is far easier and inexpensive to publish information than in print media. Therefore publishing information at web pages is basically available to everyone, but publishing information at books or magazines filters out some elements - at least it requires funding. IMO anonymity isn't a subject here, as there have been many aliases and "artist names" in magazines and books throughout the history. Of course there are some instances it is easier to trust both in Internet and at traditional media.

So, I think information at web should be considered less reliable than at magazine or book.

Originally posted by Gruntboy
Having worked as a "bibliometrician" (the science of books ) I can safely say that I have as much confidence in peer-reviewed literature as I do in a web-site.

Whilst peer-review itself is the best process out of what is available, it also introduces flaws itself.

Authors are motivated by the "publish or perish" syndrome, they cite themselves ad nauseum to increase their citation count (often used as a measure of success. The scientific community can be closed and incestuous.

I'm surprised you have such a dark view of the peer-reviewed scientific press. If I want to publish in the peer-reviewed press I must first apply to all the local authorietes like ethics commitee, radation safety etc, etc, and get the study approved. Then, every now and then, unannouced "monitors" come and check my work, my case records, that we follow the protocolls, etc. Then, I write my article and send it to a journal. The journal will send my article to several referees, and the process in double blind. I will never know who the referees were, and they won't know I wrote the article until it's published. Depending on how good the journal is considered to be, the more reviewers are usually involved. Several rounds of reviews are common. So when I publish my study in let's say The Lancet or Archives, I know that some of the most experienced experts in the field have accepted my study as correct and without scientific flaws. This doesn't mean my study is flawless - but time will tell, because other will try to replicate my findings.
Compare this procedure to putting up my own website (I have one, but I don't use it), where I can claim anything, just anything. I think the difference is lightyears.

Whereas I agree with Curdis that bad reviewing can sometimes be a problem, and I agree with you that the scientific community is too closed, I still think these problems are overcome by the demand of consistency. Nothing is science is viewed as a "fact" unless it has been demostrated many, many times over and over again by different lab groups. Replication, replication and replication leads to consistency after many years. Science is a very slow process.

Everything that is published in the peer-reviewed press will be subject for further investigation. Every new finding must be replicated by other labs before any conclusions can be drawn, thus consistency is crucial.

Also remember that different journals have different demands of quality - the better journals don't accept that you quote yourself other than when it's absolutely necessary, for instance if you refer to a method that you yourself invented. When you check the "impact factor" on a certain work, ISI has a special search function that removes all quotes an author has done to him/herself, so you can check if certain persons quote themselves very often.

A book, newspaper or scientific journal can be just as opinionated and ranting as a web site. After all, who is going to admit their research has failed or the premise of their book, upon reflection, was wrong? At least a web site is open to public review and feedback.

When it comes to how relieable something is, I don't think easier access necessarily means more reliable. The tabloids of The Sun is very available to anyone, still it's not more reliable. A website is open to public feedback yes, but how many propaganda websites will change their messages because somebody who don't share their views complains? Whereas in the scientific world, if I continue to claim my results are valid although other labs falsify my results, I'm dead meat. You have to admit the flaws of your studies, otherwise you are committing professional suicide. Remember the cold-fusion guys? Did we ever hear from them again?